Ammonia Question !

[Smells a bit fishy]

sorry eagle, ive just noticed, your leader of the fishes lol that was quick hehe.


To your problem, I don't see a problem with adding a small amount of fish as your getting impatient (totally understandable).

Now many people may disagree, I have heard bacteria don't die, the lay dormant until the conditions are right, if ths is true ( a big if) not tried it myself, if you starve the bacteria of ammonia for a few days, they may get kickstarted, however I'm not a bioligist nor experianced, so await further experianced before trying this

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I would think rather than completely starving them, doing smaller but more frequent doses might be more effective. It would seem that the concentration of the ammonia and nitrite can impact the bacteria that thrive. The bacteria we are trying to cultivate (nitrosomonas ammonia processors & nitrospira nitrite processors) do best at lower concentration levels.

So, rather than dosing 4ppm every 24 hours, maybe dosing 2ppm every 12 would be more effective at developing your colony, or if you can, even 1ppm every 6 hours. Or simulate an actual bioload and just do a slow drip of 4ppm over the course of 24 hours...Maybe 1 drop every 10 minutes or something! (Ok, now I'm just getting ridiculous!)


Thanks for noticing fishy, but I hope that no one trusts anything I say based on the number of posts I have. I've had a fair amount of free time recently, so I've been posting more. There seems to be a large number of cycling questions and having just gone through this, and watching L_Plates', menacer's, Gelt's and others cycles closely during this process (and reading all the advice given to them) I am parroting back what I have picked up. I am certainly not an "expert", but I am someone who has been watching cycles on this website on a daily basis (and reading a bunch of stuff from countless other sites, including a few scientific papers on the subject) for the past 4 months. (I was a lurker before I ever started posting.)

 

[Bronson]

Thanks for your help guys, I will dose to 2ppm every 12 hours and see if that helps. Thanks again, I'll let you know how it is in a few days.

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

Fair enough eagle. Yeh when I started on here I was someone ho knew totally nothing about fishkeeping and thought stick a load of fish in and they will be fine lol.

However I am now glad to say I have now successfully cycled both my tanks and all fish are happy.

I am now starting to think about aquascaping, getting 2 54w T5 bulbs and ballast from LFS in the next month and going to start a low tech heavily planted tank, once I have got the bulbs set up I may start a log, who knows lol

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Fair enough eagle. Yeh when I started on here I was someone ho knew totally nothing about fishkeeping and thought stick a load of fish in and they will be fine lol.

However I am now glad to say I have now successfully cycled both my tanks and all fish are happy.

I am now starting to think about aquascaping, getting 2 54w T5 bulbs and ballast from LFS in the next month and going to start a low tech heavily planted tank, once I have got the bulbs set up I may start a log, who knows lol

Not to hijack the thread, but I would check over with the planted tank area first. With that much light your low-tech might still require carbon dosing in some form or another.

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

Yeh oops lol. Sorry OP. I'll go and check